Lesson After Lesson

My last few blog entries have directly correlated with what has been going on in my life. 

With new seasons and unavoidable lessons, I desire to understand what it all means and what it is all for.

I never understood why certain lessons were repeated year after year, and the dreaded response from others was, “Because you haven’t learned the lesson yet, or you’re failing the tests.”

 I didn’t believe this. 

I knew the redundant lessons God taught like the back of my hand, and I applied them well in various areas of my life. 

So, their assumption couldn’t be correct.

I was tired of repeatedly hearing and experiencing the same things, knowing I was using wisdom and application. 

I began to feel like I was being drug through the mud to reach the same destination I was at before.

I was tired of suffering again and again in my career, family, relationships, finances, and love life, and I would give anything for God to tell me why. 

He did. 

Well, not in the way I expected. 

In my flesh, I sought the specifics of what God was doing, but in my latest testing, God showed me that He orchestrated it all not because I didn’t understand His words but because I didn’t yet believe the truths within them. 

God desires to embed the truth of Himself and His teachings into the fabric of my heart, solidifying them so that doubt and fear no longer have a place.

I was not expecting this answer. 

One recent example is how God has repeatedly shown me that He will always take care of me, whether people do or not.

I lived restating this truth and entering situations with assumed dependability on God. 

Yet, God let me experience the same lesson again in a different form. 

This time, He allowed me to not only accept and apply the lesson but to believe its truth. 

In this version, fear dwindled from something I had to pray against into something I no longer had to fight. I now just knew and believed God and acted and felt accordingly (Psalm 118:6).

I now see that God’s repeated lessons were not given to beat things into my head but to draw me to stability in Him. 

God leads me to believe in His truth so that the lessons may become something that cannot be torn away.

I was not a person who couldn’t comprehend, but I was someone who needed practice and evidence to believe what I had learned.

I truly find it beautiful that God loves us so much that He will remind us again and again of His truths while giving us exactly what we need to fully and undoubtedly believe them. 

- lr